Virtual Eternity (the Serialized Novel) Episode 18 - The Surprise Death Number Three: Reuniting with Meredith

This is Episode 18 of the serialized version of the novel, Virtual Eternity: An Epic 90s Retro Florida Techo-Pro-Life Love Story and Conversion Journey. These 52 episodes are presented here free for you every Friday. You can buy the paperback version from Mike Church’s Crusade Channel Store (at a lower price than Amazon!).

Or you can start reading at the Table of Contents: here

The Surprise Death Number Three: Reuniting with Meredith

As I drove southward, thousands of thoughts formed in me, tossing me away from Lana and the two men that had just died. Why did Meredith want this meeting? Maybe she only tired of her family. Was she in love with me? Impossible. As I was conditioned, I asked myself: what woulhered I do if she wanted us to make love as we had before? She would be lovely. Most likely, she wanted a respite from amusement park fantasies. She probably needed to talk to an actual being instead of a server, robot, or parent.

On the west side of Miami, even the toll roads filled before the weekend. The weekend: The radio spoke of it, and the people in vehicles smirked because of it. They drove to their freedom. They went home early tonight. To labor past five o’clock on the revered Friday was preposterous. They had less haste in their driving and less anger at being detained.

Since too many cars clogged the roads, I arrived twenty minutes late at the restaurant. When I entered, Meredith was sitting in its lobby entrance. Her bright eyes gleamed in the descending sunlight of the windows. She smiled, and we embraced.

She was radiant. The Florida sun had colored her face. The excessive babyish whiteness that intrigued so many had left her, but this favored her. It gave her an energy. My treasured image of Meredith’s face would never be viewed again.

A pity for her struck me. Why pity? Did it come from that memory of her doll-like face? I meshed her fingers in mine.

“Thanks for coming,” she said.

“I’m glad I did. You look awesome.”

The hostess led us to a table in the dark restaurant/tavern. The patrons were boisterous in their celebrations of the first moments of freedom. The servers adorned themselves in leisurely clothing to create the advertised atmosphere. They were excessively friendly, to the detriment of their service. They raced back and forth with smiles, leisurely, hurriedly, through and around the dim tavern.

Meredith and I read our menus, which provided an excuse for silence. I decided on a dish but continued looking. I changed my mind several times, given the numerous choices designed for all tastes. The restaurant filled with all kinds of people. It was perfectly located, near offices, apartments, suburbs, the Interstate highway, and three distribution plants. Professionals, singles, families, tourists, and blue-collars sat at tables and the bar eating or waiting. From our booth, I could see the roles the restaurant played: neighborhood saloon, romantic getaway, family dinner table, office happy hour, and gourmet experience. It succeeded in all these, but failed in having a single purpose and regulars, thus its need for draws. Today was “kids eat free’ and “happy hour 5-7”.

“Have you seen Paula lately?” I asked as I put aside my menu.

Meredith rolled her eyes. “Jonathan, I wish you wouldn’t have gotten involved with her.”

“She was a good friend.”

“You two were closer than that. You were all she ever talked about in our classes.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. For a long time, I thought you two were going steady. I knew both your reputations, but she had a major crush on you.”

“A crush? I haven’t heard that term in a while.”

“It fits,” she said. “No, I haven’t seen her lately. I hear she’s doing very well though. It’s hard to believe you don’t know this. Last month, she found some oil company CEO in a chat room, and they started dating. He’s extremely rich. I heard they were engaged.”

“An oil executive? Somehow that agrees with her. How old is he?”

“He’s in his late fifties. It’s very strange. She finished the semester at junior college and took an apartment in Denver.”

“Really?”

“Then she started working in one of his offices as a secretary. It’s not hard to figure out why she latched on to him.”

“Amazing. What about you? Still planning to go to Aurora?”

“Actually, I’ve decided to go to the University of Washington and then their med school.”

“Really? Small world. My parents went there. That’s a lot farther away. Why’d you change your mind this late?”

“A lot’s happened,” she said. “They came through with a better scholarship a couple months ago, and I accepted.”

“It’s a great med school. And it’s good to get away. You’ll learn a lot.”

“I’m moving out there in two weeks. I’m a little scared. You know: I’ll miss my parents and my friends. And it’ll be a lot of work to get into the med school.”

“If anyone can do it, you can.”

The waiter arrived and took our order, leisurely and amiably.

I had foreseen the strength of character this young woman had. But tonight, her eyes averted mine. This contradicted my memories.

“My family loves it here,” she said. “It’s too hot though.”

“Have you guys been here before?”

“No. It was my idea to come, since it’s my last vacation with them.”

“You chose to go to Orlando? I’d never have thought--”

“I needed a dose of unreality for a week.” She looked away. “Believe it or not, I also wanted to talk to you.”

“You dragged your family here so you could see me?”

“Not entirely. I do like it here.”

“Not that I mind, of course, but why’d you want to see me?”

She frowned. I had harmed her, just sixteen weeks ago. The glisten in her eyes melted me.

“I’m sorry, Meredith. About that night.”

This bit of compassion released her inhibitions. She wept. The once-porcelain face shattered with sorrow. The noise of the revelers drowned out her sobs. I searched for words.

“Is there anything I can do? I can’t know how you feel, so it’s hard for me to--”

“I was pregnant.”

At first, I discredited her. “No.” But to lie for vengeance, especially for an act whose responsibility she shared, was out of her character. I questioned her science. “Are you sure?”

“Did you hear me? I said ‘was pregnant.’ I ended it.”

“Was pregnant?” Was? My current life could continue. Then I looked again at Meredith’s face. Its sadness had expelled the last traces of childhood in her cheeks and brow.

I grabbed her hand across the table. “You aborted her? I’m so sorry, Meredith.” She stopped sobbing. “But why? I would’ve helped you. Maybe we could’ve married.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so, Jonathan. I know you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think you’d be a very good husband. And I’m not your type. You know that. I need someone more stable to marry.”

I surely would have married her for the baby, for her loveliness, and for her character. Wouldn’t I? I would have married her to atone for the suffering I thrust on her, and to resurrect the spirit of her fallen childhood in her adulthood.

“This isn’t right. I suppose I couldn’t possibly make that decision for you, but you did think about it deeply, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did. It was horrible. But what else was I supposed to do? I’m just starting my life. Already I would’ve had a life I didn’t want. I wanna have a career. I wanna meet people in college, have a social life, go to football games, and fall in love with my dream man. I don’t know whether it was wrong or not. I was taught we have a right to make that decision. They never said why we shouldn’t do it.”

“Did your parents ever talk about it? Or your pastors?”

“Not my parents. And in my church, they only told us where to protest and who to vote for. I was so confused. Then it started getting deeper into the third month.”

“Did you think about putting her up for adoption?”

“At the time, I was scared,” she said. “I’d need to give up my scholarship and put off school for a year. My parents would’ve known. But after I did it, they found out anyway.”

“How?”

“I told them. I was so upset that I had to tell someone. No one else knows about it, except you.”

“What did they say?”

“Nothing much. I could see they were mad, but they never scolded me. We just don’t talk about it.”

“Obviously they don’t know who you’re seeing tonight, right? And they don’t know where or when it happened, right?”

“They don’t know,” she said. She smiled, thinking of the frivolity of that night. “I can’t believe we did that.”

“We shouldn’t laugh about it,” I said. But we did, partly from the brief dementia that hit us.

She broke this by talking about her experience. The medical process:

“It was over quickly, but I really hurt afterward. My God, I almost went three full months.” Her emotional trauma: “I didn’t go outside for three weeks.”

“So, my parents wanted us to get away,” she said. “It happened five weeks ago.”

The friendly waiter arrived suddenly, relaxed and rushed, with a food tray. We did not speak as we nibbled at it. We ignored the growing volume of laughs and shouts that surrounded us. I tried to eat, but the food tasted plastic and bland.

After about twenty minutes, much of our portions remained uneaten. The confused server hustled by and stacked our half-full plates on his arm.

“Meredith, what do you think now? This seems wrong. You must’ve felt terrible. I should’ve felt terrible with you.”

“I’m getting over it. I must. I try not to think about it. But I let down my parents. They’ve accepted it though, almost like they’re relieved it’s over. Anyway, they can’t do much about it.”

“Is that why you decided to go farther away for college?”

“Yeah. I have a hard time facing them.”

“This isn’t right. We made a baby. A life. And now she’s gone.”

“Jonathan, stop it. I don’t want to hear that.”

“It was our baby.”

“Jonathan, please. I know.” She wept again. I scooted around the table to her side of the booth. I must forget my thoughts, for now. I can crush myself later. Now I must soothe her sadness, somehow.

I kissed her hand. “What can I do to help you? Why did you want to tell me this?”

“I thought you had a right to know,” she sobbed and sniffed. “I wanted to see that you actually cared for me and that I wasn’t just another one-night stand.” She shoved her crumbling face into a napkin and panted, spent from crying.

I must express my pity for her. That was my only penance for stealing her childhood, for forcing an almost-child to make an adult, consequential decision. “You weren’t only a one-night stand. I almost left Florida and my job to go back and find you.”

She smiled slightly.

“I thought you were unlike any girl I’d ever been. . . met. I still think that. I had hoped tonight we could have a real date, for once, and I could hold you again. You don’t deserve to go through all this, and I’m so sorry for you. I would’ve married you. I realize you won’t believe that, because I’ve mistreated a lot of people. But I’m trying to change. I’d have been a good husband. I would’ve been there. For you.”

I continued the praise and remorse, and I don’t know whether she believed it, but eventually she composed herself, somehow. We were silent together as we watched the weekend celebrations in the dark, friendly tavern.

“Oh, and by the way, it’s my birthday.”

“Happy birthday, Jonathan.”

Soon we escaped from that happiness. We left the cheery waiters and walked to her father’s rental car. Her eyes again dampened. I hugged her, then we kissed for a few seconds, until she pulled away.

“You made a momentous decision. Both our lives will be radically different from what they could’ve been. I must know how yours turns out. Write to me.” She nodded.

We kissed again, as lovers. In another life, we were husband and wife, father and mother. Here, she left me, biting her quivering lip and not saying another word, with the glistening blue eyes of the forty-year-old woman I saw during my last night of college.

As she left, the distant spires of Miami, tinting the sky with orange, the brightest, liveliest place I could imagine, beckoned to me.

Next week: Episode 19 - The Barhopping: Finding more perfects in Miami

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